Mark Edwards
More than 90% of enterprises in developing countries are small businesses and provide jobs for millions of people. The Dharavi slum, Mumbai’s largest, has four thousand recycling units employing thirty thousand rag pickers; six thousand tons of rubbish are sorted in the slum every day.
Small enterprises tend to be highly innovative, make excellent use of scarce capital and skills, and provide a range of services and goods both to their communities and to large corporations.
The workshops I have visited throughout the developing world struggle with power cuts, water shortages, and old manufacturing equipment. It is aid programmes and subsidized technology transfers that bring in this cheap, often obsolete technology. They need the tools, the energy and the bank loans to compete, connect and collaborate.
Workshop enterprises
Stocking factory, Bogotá, Colombia
Family poncho business, La Paz, Bolivia
Boiler factory, La Paz, Bolivia
All © Mark Edwards/Still Pictures
